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After conducting interviews with each one of the city’s 16 mayoral candidates, I’ve prepared the following quick guide to the race for the top office. Click on the names to hear or read short versions of our conversations.
Jeff Adachi – A resident of… …

One of the more important and most overlooked races going on in San Francisco right now is the campaign to be the city’s next district attorney. When Kamala Harris left the post for state office last year, outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed then-Police Chief George Gascon to take her place. Now, Gascon is running for a full four-year term, but faces stiff competition from four other candidates. Previously, we spoke with Bill Fazio, David Onek, Sharmin Bock and George Gascon. Today, in our final interview, we speak with Vu Trinh, a longtime public defender and current member of the Board of Legal Specialization.

Now, we’ll turn to the most important local election that very few are paying attention to. Last year, Kamala Harris was elected to statewide office, which meant leaving her post as San Francisco’s district attorney. That caused outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom to do something unprecedented: he appointed his police chief to replace her. Now, to defend his seat, District Attorney George Gascon will have to fend off four competitors. KALW’s Ben Trefny spoke with criminal justice editor, Rina Palta to discuss the candidates.

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BEN TREFNY: So Rina, why is this race so important?

RINA PALTA: People have a vague idea of what a district attorney does: prosecuting crimes. But also, the district attorney basically makes criminal justice policy for the county they’re in. So it’s up to the DA what sorts of crimes get punished and to some degree, with what sanctions. The district attorney decides, for instance, whether to ask for the death penalty if someone’s accused of murder.

TREFNY: So in November we’ve got five candidates in the race and we’ll be hearing excerpts of interviews from all of them shortly. This is the first really competitive election for this position that San Francisco has had since Kamala Harris was first elected back in 2003. What are the big issues that you see at stake?

PALTA: As with any election, especially one like this, where ranked choice voting is forcing candidates to band together and form strategic alliances, there are a number of dominating themes. And I’ll let one of the candidates, David Onek, introduce the first one. Onek is a member of the Bay Area’s robust criminal justice reform community and has worked for a number of organizations, like Walden House and the Haywood Burns Institute, and was also a member of the San Francisco Police Commission.

DAVID ONEK: Our criminal justice system is completely broken. We are spending so much on corrections in this state, on incarceration, that we virtually bankrupt the state of California and we’re unable to pay for all the services that would actually make us safer, like more cops, community policing on the street, like more teachers in our schools, and more services in our communities.

PALTA: At the moment, Onek is the founding director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, and he’s been working to reform the criminal justice system for twenty years. And in this race, he’s the changer, the guy who wants to step in and make San Francisco a national model, a kind of experiment in how you can do things differently with crime and punishment.

TREFNY: That sounds great in theory, but what would David Onek actually do to overhaul the criminal justice system?

PALTA: That’s what I asked Onek. Here’s what he said.

ONEK: So let’s talk about drugs for a minute. The War on Drugs has been a complete failure. The Onion had a great line a few years ago, before it became more popular, which said “Drugs Win Drug War.” And I think that really sums up where we are with the War on Drugs. Nobody can say it’s working. We need to do something different. And I absolutely will not be incarcerating people for low-level possession of drugs. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s wasting precious prison resources that should be going to serious and violent offenders. We need to provide treatment to folks who need it. We need to provide services for those with mental health needs and help people stay on the right path.

PALTA (To David Onek): So day one, coming into office, looking at your caseload, talking to your prosecutors, do you – without these kinds of programs in place already, because they exist to some degree, but not nearly to the degree that would be necessary, do you say we’re not prosecuting this, we’re just going to dismiss this or we’re going to put this person on probation?

ONEK: Well, we do have excellent community-based programs in San Francisco. I think the programs are there. We need to make sure that they do receive additional funding, as we have more offenders coming back to the county level under realignment. Both for the law enforcement and supervision side and for the community side. And so I will absolutely fight for that and we need to capture savings that are made by reducing our prison population – of course some of those savings are going to go to deficit reduction – but we need to capture a portion of those savings, what other states call “justice reinvestment,” and make sure that it’s reinvested at the community level.

TREFNY: That was district attorney candidate David Onek talking about what his priorities would be if elected to San Francisco’s top law enforcement spot. You’re listening to Crosscurrents. I’m Ben Trefny, and we’ll be hearing from all of San Francisco’s DA candidates today. I’m here with KALW’s criminal justice editor, Rina Palta. So Rina, if Onek is “the reformer” candidate, where does someone like Sharmin Bock, who’s a career prosecutor, stand?

PALTA: Everyone in this race is positioning themselves as a reformer, which if you know anything about most district attorneys races, is pretty unique to San Francisco’s political environment. Now candidate Sharmin Bock is, like you said, a career prosecutor who currently is an assistant DA in Alameda County. And she’s best known for her work going after child sex traffickers in Oakland. She’s the only woman in this race, something that’s probably going to help her at the polls, and she’s one of two experienced prosecutors running to be San Francisco’s top prosecutor. All the pieces are really in place for her.

TREFNY: Except that she’s not the incumbent.

PALTA: True, and the question is whether she lives and breathes San Francisco values, like a commitment to rehabilitation instead of prison, and life in prison instead of the death penalty for murder – things that are generally important to San Francisco voters, but are treated differently in the slightly more “tough on crime” Alameda County, where Bock has spent most of her career. When I interviewed Bock, I asked her if she was too steeped in the criminal justice system to be able to step back and look at its flaws and find innovative solutions. And here’s what Bock said about her capacity to make reform.

SHARMIN BOCK: You know, I think I’m the only one who actually has a track record of having done exactly that within the DA’s office. So you look at, in early 2000, nobody saw the child sex trafficking issue on the horizon. I saw it on the horizon. Not only did I see it on the horizon, but I have fought ever since to divert the girls who are exploited away from criminalization towards rescue. And also ensuring accountability for the traffickers. So I’m not just talking the talk, I’ve actually walked the talk. I’ve walked the talk and I’ve received national recognition for it.

PALTA (To Sharmin Bock): What concerns are specific to San Francisco and what do you think is unique about this city that you would need to tackle as the DA here?

BOCK: So I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 40 years. I moved here when I was 4 and I’m 49, and I’ve been in Alameda County as a prosecutor for 22 years. The concerns that really seem at the forefront in everyone’s minds today, I think first and foremost, there’s a crisis of confidence in our leadership. What does that mean? That means we have over 1,000 unsolved murders and over 900 unsolved rapes in our crime lab that haven’t even entered the system. That is actually scary because those cases just sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, means that the perpetrators are amongst us. And the primary responsibility of the DA has to be achieving justice for victims of violent crime. Keeping the community safe for our most violent and dangerous criminals. You can’t get there if you have a DNA crime lab in crisis, you can’t get there if you have a DA who’s a political appointee who, at every step of the way, instead of fixing the problem, has been covering the problem up.

TREFNY: That was San Francisco district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock talking about her policy priorities and criticisms of the current administration. This is Crosscurrents from KALW News, and we’re here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta, talking about the pluses and minuses of each candidate. Which brings us to our incumbent, George Gascon. Bock is very critical of him. He’s the incumbent, the presumed frontrunner, so challengers are bound to be critical of that person. We’ll get back to this issue of the DNA lab in a minute. But first, Rina, can you give us some background on Gascon?

PALTA: Well, Gascon is a man who’s been a leader in the criminal justice system for a long time. First, moving up through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department to become second in command, and then as the police chief in Mesa, Arizona.

TREFNY: I actually first heard of him because he played a big role in standing up for immigrant rights down there in Arizona.

PALTA: Exactly, Gascon spent his time in Arizona playing foil, basically to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who basically has taken it upon himself to crack down on illegal immigration in Arizona. And Gascon very publicly opposed Arpaio, didn’t go along with his brand of law enforcement, and testified against his actions in Congress. And that helped Gascon become so widely respected as a law enforcement officer, and it helped him get his position here as chief of police in San Francisco. The question is whether he’s now in the wrong place as district attorney, and that’s an issue his opponents are really beating on. Does this former police chief have the independence and ability to handle things like investigating and possibly charging police misconduct? Or conducting an open review of the DNA lab? Just as a refresher, there was a scandal involving the city’s crime lab a few years back, which led to the drug portion being shut down. Now, there’s a question as to whether the lab that processes DNA could also be compromised. I asked Gascon about that and here’s what he said.

GEORGE GASCON: So first of all, I think it’s really important and my opponents and I do not talk about this, most of the problems that originated with the crime lab preceded me. I came here as the chief of police, actually I was brought here to work on a lot of problems here that have been here for years. When I became aware of the problems with the crime lab, within, actually less than five hours from the time I became aware of the crime lab problem, I did a press conference, brought the public in, talked about it. I did a first level of analysis and determined that controlled substances was the major problem. We shut that down. I called the Justice Department and asked the Justice Department to come in and do an investigation and I called the DA’s office. There were some problems, but the DNA lab was working fine. There were some areas where we had problems with some of the protocols and those protocols were fixed.

PALTA (To George Gason): So let’s move on to the other issue I wanted to talk to you about and that is police oversight. Obviously there’s been some scandals with some possible misconduct on the part of undercover officers. There’s also been ongoing issues in San Francisco about Robbery Abatement Teams and about buy-busts and whether or not those are within the realm of what we like to do in San Francisco. How do you approach police oversight and making sure that people aren’t getting unnecessarily swept up?

GASCON: Well first of all, I think it’s helpful to put things into context. And if you look historically of where I’ve been, I’ve actually been a police reformer for many years. I worked very aggressively to turn around the LAPD after the Ramparts scandal. In fact, I was the one running training for the LAPD at the time and we actually went around working with members of the civil liberties community and the attorney general’s office and actually developed police training. We posted the Bill of Rights in every single classroom. More recently, when you look at the cases involving the Henry Hotel, where you have undercover police officers that were caught on video, allegedly violating people’s rights, I didn’t wait for anybody to tell me that I had to dismiss cases. We immediately dismissed over a hundred cases. So if you are an objective observer, and you look at all the things that I have done, including what I have done in the last 10 months and you would be not only supporting me, but you would see that I have taken very proactive, way above and beyond, to make sure that we have a clean trial process.

TREFNY: That’s current District Attorney George Gascon, who was formerly San Francisco’s police chief. He’s explaining why he doesn’t think there’s an inherent conflict of interest when a police chief becomes DA. This is Crosscurrents, and I’m Ben Trefny here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. Rina, there’s another obvious concern about someone like Gascon becoming DA. And that’s that he doesn’t really have any experience as a prosecutor.

PALTA: That’s right. Gascon argues that he’s worked with attorneys and supervised attorneys throughout his career and has what is certainly a ton of experience evaluating and putting together cases. But, no, he has never worked as a prosecutor, and that could be a concern to some voters. It’s also the case that there are really only two people in this race who’ve worked as prosecutors, Bock being one of them – and only one as a prosecutor in San Francisco, and that’s Bill Fazio. Fazio is pretty incredulous that there are only two candidates in the race who have worked as prosecutors. He’s run before for DA, actually this will be his fourth try. But he says he entered the race because the other candidates, to him, are so lacking.

TREFNY: Let’s hear from Fazio now.

BILL FAZIO: Unfortunately there’s not a lot of training, there’s little enthusiasm, there’s no creativity in that office when you have a leader who’s never been in a courtroom before. Who has never practiced law. Who is a former police chief. He may have done fine in that capacity, but in my opinion, frankly, he has no business being the chief prosecutor. Ms. Bock has experience, thank God. Mr. Onek has absolutely no experience, and I’ve been with him, he’s a nice young man, he’s a professor of law. But he’s up in his ivory tower; he’s never stepped down into the dirt and grit of the city of San Francisco. He doesn’t work in San Francisco. Mr. Vu has been a defense attorney in Orange County. I dare say since he’s only lived here since April he doesn’t have a real handle on things. So all things being equal, I think I bring to the table what all the other candidates ostensibly bring.

If you look at Gascon, he’s got a background in law enforcement. I’ve been in law enforcement in one capacity or another for 35 years. Ms. Bock is an actual prosecutor, I have more prosecutorial experience than she has and all of mine is local here in San Francisco. Mr. Onek has progressive ideas; he’s been opposed to the death penalty from the very beginning whereas some of the other candidates have changed their position. I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for the last 15 years and have publicly stated I would never seek the death penalty in San Francisco. And Mr. Trinh is a defense attorney and I, too am a defense attorney at this point in time. So I’d like to think that even if someone were committed to one of the other candidates that I would be a very good and appropriate second choice in this ranked choice voting that we have here in San Francisco.

PALTA (To Bill Fazio): So if you won the election and became DA, what are some of the first policies you would implement?

FAZIO: Well, I would underscore the importance of juvenile justice, which has always been ignored. I’ve worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney at so-called “juvie” here in San Francisco. It’s physically separated from the office and the people who work there are separated in spirit as well. It’s never been given high priority. I would make that a high priority in my office because it’s the one area where we can identify people who really don’t belong in the system and get them out of the system.

TREFNY: That was DA candidate Bill Fazio, speaking with KALW’s Rina Palta, who now joins me in the studio to talk about the San Francisco district attorney’s race. So we’re down to our final candidate.

PALTA: We are. And that’s Vu Trinh, who I’ve saved for last because he’s a bit of an outlier in this race. And that’s largely because Trinh, who until recently was a public defender in Orange County, doesn’t actually believe in the politics surrounding this race. Here’s what he says about the fact that district attorneys are elected at all.

VU TRINH: I’ve seen that this politicization of the criminal justice system has done a real disservice to the entire justice system, where we see a lot of injustices when prosecutors are more concerned with their conviction rate than doing justice and doing what’s right. One of my primary goals is to depoliticize that office, from the investigative unit, to the men and women who serve as prosecutors in that office.

TREFNY: So Trinh is running for DA despite not really liking the fact that it’s a political office he’s running for. What kinds of things would he do if elected?

PALTA: Well, one of his ideas is to digitize everything in the court system, which is a more revolutionary idea than one would think, because the criminal justice system, I’m pretty sure, will be the last market for paper products on the planet.

TREFNY: That and journalism.

PALTA: Yeah. And he also has a plan that would basically allow anyone to set up a surveillance camera on their property and hook it into a police network. Here’s how Trinh explains that plan.

TRINH: When something actually occurred in the areas where there is surveillance, we can use that to accurately identify the perpetrator. Because the way we’re doing things and investigating now is very archaic. It’s the same type of investigative process that has been used for centuries. We really need to move that along because we have an interest in protecting the innocent. And I can assure you, I’ll bet you 25 percent or even higher of people that are caught up in the criminal justice system due to eye witness identification is being wrapped up in a case where they’re clearly innocent of the crime.

TREFNY: That’s San Francisco DA candidate Vu Trihn, explaining one of his outside-the-box ideas. This is Crosscurrents. We’re discussing the San Francisco race for district attorney with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. One of the benefits of having such a crowded race, Rina, must be having so many unique and interesting ideas floating around.

PALTA: Definitely. There’s no question that having this race be a competitive one, which hasn’t happened in almost a decade, is shaking things up a bit and also offering a kind of referendum on how the voters feel about our criminal justice system. Do they want an insider or an outsider? A reformist or an experienced professional? All of the candidates are coming to the race with different things to offer. I’d say the main drawback of this being a ranked choice election is that the candidates, by virtue of the system, are really required to be a bit guarded about the specifics of what they’d do in office, and more inclined to band together on the surface and fight for those second and third place votes.

TREFNY: Behind George Gascon at this point, who’s probably polling ahead as the incumbent.

PALTA: Exactly.

TREFNY: Thanks a lot, Rina.

PALTA: Thank you.

The polls are already open for those who’d like to vote early, but election day is November 8.

One of the more important and most overlooked races going on in San Francisco right now is the campaign to be the city’s next district attorney. When Kamala Harris left the post for state office last year, outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed then-Police Chief George Gascon to take her place. Now, Gascon is running for a full four-year term, but faces stiff competition from four other candidates. Previously, we spoke with Bill Fazio, David Onek, and Sharmin Bock. Today, we sit down with the sitting District Attorney and former Police Chief George Gascon.

One of the more important and most overlooked races going on in San Francisco right now is the campaign to be the city’s next district attorney. When Kamala Harris left the post for state office last year, outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed then-Police Chief George Gascon to take her place. Now, Gascon is running for a full four-year term, but faces stiff competition from four other candidates. Previously, we spoke with Bill Fazio and David Onek. Today, courtesy of our partners on this project at the San Francisco Public Press, we feature Sharmin Bock, a San Francisco native and longtime prosecutor in Alameda County, known especially for her work on child sex trafficking. Bock sat down with the Public Press’ Jason Winshell and Hank Drew.

One of the more important and most overlooked races going on in San Francisco right now is the campaign to be the city’s next district attorney. When Kamala Harris left the post for state office last year, outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed then-P… …

One of the more important and most overlooked races going on in San Francisco right now is the campaign to be the city’s next district attorney. When Kamala Harris left the post for state office last year, outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed then-Police Chief George Gascon to take her place. Now, Gascon is running for a full four-year term, but faces stiff competition from four other candidates. Why does this race matter so much? The district attorney is essentially the county’s top policy maker when it comes to criminal justice, deciding who gets charged with which crimes, and has an impact well beyond the courtroom. Theoretically, at least, a district attorney could choose to not make marijuana possession a local crime, or decide that police can or can’t engage in undercover operations, or decide that police should focus on murders and rapes above all else–all by virtue of being the one who decides whether or not to charge crimes. So how do the candidates stand on these issues? We’ll be posting interviews with all five of the candidates for district attorney this week. First up, Bill Fazio, a longtime prosecutor and defense attorney who grew up in San Francisco.

Over the past eight weeks, KALW News has been bringing you the sound of the new season – no, not football or prime time television – but politics.

We’ve had extensive conversations with each of the 16 San Francisco mayoral candidates, and throughout these interviews, one name has come up over and over again: Ed Lee.

GERRY SHIH: Mr. Lee’s name had been bubbling for weeks at City Hall – but nobody kind of thought it was realistic, simply because he had refused to do the job. He said he wanted to keep a city administrator’s job. He’s a low-key, kind of quiet guy, likes to stay out of the limelight, doesn’t like any of the political drama.

We spoke with Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih earlier this year, right before the city’s Board of Supervisors voted Lee to take the place of former Mayor Gavin Newsom. Since then, Lee has transformed from a little-known city administrator into the city’s top candidate for mayor. And his rise hasn’t been without controversy.

KALW’s Ben Trefny sat down with Mayor Lee in Studio B, and began by asking about the neighborhood the current mayor lives in.

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ED LEE: I live in the Glen Park neighborhood, so that’s kind of in the center of things. Glen Park is kind of the southern part of the city, so we’re just off of I-280, you get off at the Monterey Boulevard exit. And you go right up and we’re on top of the hill, behind what a lot of the neighborhood folks call the Blue School, which is the Glen Park Elementary School that just got renovated and has just reopened.

BEN TREFNY: Starting in Glen Park then, since you’re mayor of the city, I’d kind of like to go around the city and talk about some of the different neighborhoods and then get your thoughts on those. Let’s head just a little bit south of Glen Park to Visitacion Valley, Excelsior, and Ingleside.

LEE: Well I certainly have all the time in my own mind comparing what’s positively happening in my neighborhood because there’s very few vacancies in the storefronts. As soon as I get to the Outer Mission, Excelsior, which is just literally about a mile away, I do see some storefronts that are vacant. And the merchants there, and the residents there, and the supervisor of that district has asked me to pay a lot more attention to that area…

BEN TREFNY: John Avalos.

LEE: Yeah, and I’ve enjoyed walking with him through the district. We had a couple walks by ourselves through the Balboa BART station and we made some comparisons and immediately, I was able to help him make some immediate improvements – cleaning up some physical improvements, some balance between the station operators and the maintenance operations that are out there with the community who wanted a little more safer routes.

TREFNY: Let’s go into my neighborhood: the Sunset and Golden Gate Park. What are your impressions of those neighborhoods?

LEE: You know they’re beautiful, beautiful areas, of course. And I was out there part of the Outside Lands… There is a tremendous effort going on by the residents to do a lot of private volunteerism to improve their schools, improve their neighborhood parks. This public-private partnership that we’ve got going with Recreation and Parks – particularly around and in the parks at Golden Gate – I think are lovely.

TREFNY: Now we’ve lost a lot of gardeners in Golden Gate Park out there over the last few years. There have been trees falling in Golden Gate Park – how do you solve some of those issues in that area?

LEE: Well the public-private partnerships that we’re developing are really supporting the parks now. But we’ve got a new program that just started on October 1, some 200 people have been hired through our human services agency. One hundred of them are dedicated to the parks, and they’re going to help the full-time maintenance folks clean the parks. This is job training for people on welfare through the Cal Works program and other programs. One hundred of them are dedicated to the streets cleaning program – you see them already; they’re in the merchant corridors as we talk… And I think you’re going to see a tremendous turnaround resulting from the next year of this additional 100 people out there.

TREFNY: The economy is really the biggest topic on the table for all the candidates right now, and everyone has their different jobs programs. You mentioned one there. What do you see as the future for the economy and jobs in San Francisco?

LEE: Well certainly jobs growth and economic stability – that’s my number one focus. And for the next four years, if I’m privilege to be the mayor of San Francisco, I’m going to keep creating jobs. I know that saving Twitter was one of the biggest decisions that our office working with the Board of Supervisors was able to do, because we literally saved 2,500 jobs leaving the city. These are jobs that are predicted to job in the next year and a half.

What resonated was not only did we do that for that company and for San Franciscans, we did it in the way in which it would immediately revitalize Mid-Market. And that’s what I want to do with every merchant corridor of the city.

TREFNY: Being a true city veteran you know that there have been a lot of efforts to revitalize Mid-Market, for decades and decades and decades. Why would this be successful as compared to other ones? I mean I’m sure that people were just as optimistic as you are…

LEE: We learned a lot of the lessons from the past failures. And we know that there can’t just be one aspect to do it; you can’t just rely on a Twitter. What we’re doing is we’re putting together whole packages of things: small loans programs, hiring, arts, as well as more safety. We’ve got a sub-station that’s going in.

But we’re not even waiting for the sub-station. I already activated our civic engagement division from the city administrator’s office – something very successful that we created was the community ambassador program. Something that I talk with even the owners of Twitter were concerned about was that they wanted the safety of their workforce to be very positive. And once you get safety in there, you’re going to have a lot of businesses that want to locate. And it’s much safer today than it was literally a year ago.

The community ambassadors program is going to have local people hired within the community to be additional eyes and ears to watch what happens on the street – especially those hours where people are going to work and coming off of work late at night. We’re going to have additional eyes to help the police.

TREFNY: I want to do some quick word association. Give a thought on the word or phrase that I say. “Being the first Chinese American mayor in San Francisco.”

LEE: Proud. Also a chance to say as an Asian American who has spent a professional career up here, what can I do to help everybody and to share the values that my family has with every neighborhood in the city. I’m very proud to do that.

TREFNY: “Chinatown.”

LEE: Well Chinatown – very big attraction but struggling community. A lot of elderly, a lot of poor behind the facades. For me, helping build the Central Subway to help connect north and south into Chinatown is going to be very important.

TREFNY: “Rose Pak.”

LEE: Good leader of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. I listen to her but I also listen to everybody else. I listen to a lot of people to make sure that I get good input. I get her input as well, but I have to make my own decisions.

TREFNY: “The Go Lorrie investigation.”

LEE: You know, I wanted to make sure… I expect 100% compliance with our campaign, and we have it. We’ve opened up our books and we made sure that our district attorney who is probing this has got a good look at what we’ve done, so I’m very confident that we’ll be found to not be the target of this. Having said that, you know I want to expect everybody who’s working with my camp to be compliant, 100%, with every law. And those that think that they’re supporting me by doing things that might be questionable, they’re going to have to own up to that. They’re going to have to be accountable to it, but we’re running a clean campaign and that’ll be shown, and I’m very confident that we’ll proceed forward on this. Again, anybody who thinks that they’re supporting me and they do questionable things, they’re going to be personally accountable to that and I strongly encourage that they comply with the law – everybody has to do that.

TREFNY: Why should voters elect you to this position?

LEE: I’m excited about this city, I love it, I’ve been leading it, I’ve been demonstrating what I can do the first nine months as mayor.

I’m enthusiastic about every neighborhood of this city, and I want to make sure everyone is connected. I think that my leadership and my brand of style, putting people together, solving problems together, resonates with everybody. They don’t want to see political factions be resulting from what’s happening in Sacramento or even in Washington DC. I think our city is unique because we do come together. Why not do it more on a consistent basis, led by a mayor who loves every neighborhood of the city and wants it to connect up?

There are 16 candidates in this year’s San Francisco mayoral race, including two city supervisors and a state senator. There’s an educator, an entrepreneur, and an entertainer. The city’s public defender, city attorney, and assessor recorder. A t… …

In the 1960s, an immigrant from Bolivia landed in the Bay with big dreams.

Cesar Ascarrunz attended UC Berkeley and USF before he decided to try his hand at owning a business. Soon, he was running three restaurants in North Beach and eight nightclubs around the city and, including Cesar’s Latin Palace, one of the city’s most famous places to hear salsa.

In 1984 and 1988 he ran, unsuccessfully, for San Francisco’s top office, and now he’s giving it another try.

KALW’s Ben Trefny has been talking with all 16 candidates for mayor in our continuing coverage of the SF mayoral race. In this interview, Ascarrunz explains why he’s running for mayor.

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BEN TREFNY: I’d like to start off by talking about your neighborhood.

CESAR ASCARRUNZ: I live in San Francisco for the last 40 years, a couple of years in the Mission District. After that they built a house for me in Bernal Heights, my very beautiful house – seven-bedroom house at the end, it was the biggest house. I moved to Diamond Heights just off Glen Park. I lived there for 25 years.

TREFNY: So tell me what you think of the Bernal Heights, Mission, and Diamond Heights neighborhoods.

ASCARRUNZ: The neighborhoods before I moved to the Mission District, my business in the ‘70s, was very dark – let me put it that way. There was a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, it was dark. At 6 o’clock, that was the end of the Mission District, including Bernal Heights and Excelsior. So when I opened Cesar’s Latin Palace in the ‘70s, I moved my business, I started bringing the light and chasing the crime out and chasing the rats away, bringing to Cesar’s Latin Palace one of the best known clubs in the world.

TREFNY: What are your top three priorities for the city of San Francisco?

ASCARRUNZ: I want to cap the corruption and the administration of the city and county of San Francisco. I want to cut corruption completely. And I’m not against the police department or fire department – I need good reinforcement. But last year in the Chronicle, front page, they put the chief of the police department made $567,000 in wages in one year. It’s there in the police records. I’m not making it up.

So the deputy chiefs, they work nine to five. They’re executives. They give to him $300,000 sick leave and $320,000. So together almost $1.2 million.

TREFNY: Now I understand that you’re saying that there are too many people in public office, they’re getting paid too much money. There are too many city employees. However with the system established as it is with so many people in political power making such decisions and being paid however much money, how would you coming in as an outsider possibly change that as dramatically as you’re talking about?

ASCARRUNZ: No, it’s very simple. When they retire, I will never get another person to replace him. Simple.

TREFNY: At best you can only have two terms as mayor.

ASCARRUNZ: That’s okay. They want to retire, they retire. Also I’m going to tell you: When one retires, I will not replace that one. I will have four security guards from the outside that are well-trained, don’t get me wrong – they are as good as the police department with guns. Fifty-thousand dollars each. I will get four for one. If they retire 10, I will have how many? Forty. If they retire 100, I will have 400 police on the streets, not on-call. We will have a fantastic city with police protection.

TREFNY: With privatized police protection.

ASCARRUNZ: Not privatizing, just contracted police protection.

TREFNY: So you talked about corruption in public office, you talked about how government is too big in San Francisco. What would be another priority of yours if you became mayor of San Francisco?

ASCARRUNZ: The money we waste on the homeless. We almost expend $800 million on homeless, on 12,000-15,000 homeless. This is the most disgraceful thing for me to even mention that. We expend almost $20 million suggesting a few people in the hospital business. Why didn’t he take care of that? Why do the guys that don’t care of that, they patronizing corruption?

TREFNY: So what’s your solution to homeless in San Francisco? Gavin Newsom had an idea of Care not Cash, which has been implemented in different ways to try to put money into services rather than giving checks to homeless people. So what would be your solution? Or would you let them fend for themselves?

ASCARRUNZ: They have been in San Francisco for the last 30-50 years. Fourteen to 15 schools have been closed – you know, safety. Excellent shape. You know what I will do? Instead of fixing the schools, I’ll petition and make room for the homeless, we don’t have to pay anything. We will save millions and millions of dollars.

TREFNY: So these would be places for them to sleep?

ASCARRUNZ: It’s a classroom. Let’s say it’s this big – that’s a beautiful housing. They have showers, water, they have everything in there in those schools. Sometimes you have to give them back their dignity, treat them like nice human beings. That’s what I did in Cesar’s Latin Palace – many benefits for homeless.

TREFNY: It’s interesting that you bring that up because a lot of homeless people are located in the Tenderloin in single-room occupancy hotels. And you’re talking about spreading perhaps the housing out around the city. There’s an issue recently in the Marina District where there was an idea to have foster kids who age out of the system live in the transitional housing in the Marina, but there’s been a lot of public outcry for bringing the possibilities of crime or lack of supervision to a different part of San Francisco. In the end, though, a lot of the Tenderloin is in a way ghetto-ized with people who are having trouble finding housing or getting on their feet. So you’re thinking about spreading this around the city more.

ASCARRUNZ: Exactly. They have those schools in nice neighborhoods. Maybe it’s not in the Marina, but there are enough capacity to put the 10,000 or 12,000 homeless. You know how much we pay for each room in the Tenderloin hotels? Eighty-five dollars a night. The best hotels in the country that are in San Francisco are for the homeless – wow, what a beautiful racket, let me put it this way.

TREFNY: So you clearly have strong opinions about ways the city should be run differently, but it’s been run the same way or similarly for quite a while. There’s a lot of political power within certain groups and a lot of elected officials, of whom there are many qualified elected officials running for mayor. How if you came into power in San Francisco would you be able to change it?

ASCARRUNZ: Oh yes, very simple. I’m a professional businessman. I used to have 200-600 employees myself. I have to know how to make money to pay the people every week.

TREFNY: This would now be tens of thousands of people.

ASCARRUNZ: This is nothing – it’s the same principle. I have the degree from college from South America studying business administration. And also I enhance my education at UC Berkeley and USF…

TREFNY: But there would be tremendous resistance.

ASCARRUNZ: I don’t think so. Because you know why? I work for the people; the people don’t work for me. That’s the difference. I made the Mission District the way it is, the Excelsior, I made myself with my money, with Cesar’s Latin Palace, 29 billboards all over the Bay Area for one year. Nobody did that and nobody will.

TREFNY: So in one minute can you tell me your pitch for why people should vote for you to be mayor.

ASCARRUNZ: I always tell people in the streets, I put 50-100 in my pocket, this flyer, and I tell them, “Do you know of the gentlemen who’s running for mayor?” They tell me, “No.” I tell them very simple: Please vote for the people you know; not the people who just want you to know, or pushing you to the media, or to whatever advertisement. You’re shaking my hand, right?” I tell the people. “Sir, I’m voting for you.” All kinds of people: black, Chinese, Latinos – the Latino vote I got it. God is giving me the Latino vote.

And you don’t have to vote for me. Vote for the people they deserve, San Francisco. Even Senator Leland Yee told me, “You are special, Cesar. You care very much for San Francisco.”

This is my town, this is my city, and I have to protect because I don’t owe nothing to nobody, and nobody doesn’t have to tell me, “You owe me something.”